A Cold, Dark Rain
by Lexikal
Summary: "He feels so exhausted, suddenly, legs weak and wobbling like rubber, but he can't get out of the shower. He can't go back to his old life. He is on the verge of crisis. He sits on the bottom of the shower in a ball, and the water pelts at his back and his sopping hair and his closed, long-lashed eyes." Will is struggling after being released from the sanitarium.


**A Cold, Dark Rain by Lexikal**

**Summary:** Takes place a few days after Will is released from Chilton's mental institution. He has never felt more on the edge of madness, and never felt more alone.

**Author's note:** This will be short and one chapter, and complete. I might write some more Hannibal one-shots in the future to get into writing. Got a few very long novel-length things going on that I feel obligated to finish. If you like this, review. If you don't like it, review and give me polite criticism.

* * *

He has never been so utterly alone in his soul. He sits in the waning day's light on his second night home, and stares at the little red, blinking light of his answering machine. The pulse of his social life.

Alanna has phoned and left awkward, stilted messages, but he does not wish to speak to her.

He loved her.

He still does, in the universal, agape way he loves everyone, but his heart is bruised, and back behind his eyes is the pressing need for tears.

He won't let himself cry. It is a stubborn, pig-headed trait he has had since he was a boy, equating tears with weakness. He knows, intellectually, that nothing is wrong with crying. It doesn't make him less of a man, and he has- Will grimaces to himself as he thinks this- every reason in the world right now to cry.

But he won't.

His body won't let him. It just will not.

He is drinking red wine. He can feel it in his blood, taking over, dulling his senses, reducing his control.

His mind is filled with very dark thoughts.

He knows what Hannibal is, and Bedelia Du Maurier's acceptance of him, it helped him retain his sanity, there, right at the end. But the good people in his life- Jack and Alanna, namely- they have no idea what Hannibal is. They don't believe him. They think he-Will- is unstable.

They no longer believe he is a serial killer, no, that was cleared up very nicely. They no longer believe he is a serial killer, because physical evidence has proven he is not.

Their support of him is lukewarm, almost offensive, but he can not say these things to them, he can not even consciously think them without feeling a pang of guilt in his bowels.

Who is he, the mere William Graham, to judge others so harshly?

He goes back and forth with it. He knows what Hannibal is, and worse (or better? Which is it, really?) Hannibal knows that he knows. Hannibal is, ironically, the only one who understands what he is going through. Hannibal is the reason Will is going through most of what he is going through, existentially, and that fact isn't lost on the profiler. But it doesn't change the fact that Hannibal- and Hannibal alone- is in a unique position.

Amongst nearly 7 billion humans, only Hannibal Lecter is capable of understanding the depths of the darkness pulling at him, the dark hands in his mind trying to pull him down. Only Hannibal gets it, and maybe, quite realistically, Hannibal is the only one who will ever get it.

In Hannibal's eyes is a mammalian warmth. Will has thought about it multiple times. If Hannibal was merely something non-human with an erudite, refined mask, Will knows he wouldn't be so conflicted about the man. But there is a spark of humanness to Hannibal, Will is pretty sure about that. Some basic goodness that maybe- _just maybe_- can be saved from the darkness?

Maybe?

Fuck, he doesn't know. He doesn't know anything anymore. He sips at his wine, and then, suddenly, is gulping it and the urge to cry is stronger. His dogs are looking at him in the day's waning light. One of them makes a pathetic mewling noise of commiseration. Their wet, eager, canine eyes lock on his, all profound love and obedience. _We love you! We love you, Master! _

Without them, he thinks he might have cracked long ago.

His dogs... his dogs need him.

He has saved them.

Without him, they would have starved on the road, or been rounded up and, quite possibly, euthanized. Euthanized is a nice word for murder of those society has deemed extraneous. Sick fucking world we live in, boys and girls, sick to the core and only getting sicker all the time.

Will's skin feels cold and sticky. Sick-sweat, but he's not really sick. He's grieving, in an odd way. Grieving his past life, grieving what he views as the dissolution of his sanity, grieving the loss of the Hannibal Lecter he thought was real; grieving Alanna's lack of trust in him and what he thought she was; grieving Jack's loss of faith.

Grieving so many things, but there is no casket to mourn over, nothing tangible, and the crying in his head fees so real but his eyes remain dry.

He reaches over and pours the last of his wine into his cup, and drinks it as fast as he can.

Someone- one of the dogs- makes another we're-sad-because-you're-sad noise and Will smiles in the general direction of the noise. He doesn't know, in his fuzzy, decaying state who made that little moan.

"It's okay. I'm okay, you guys," he tells the animals, and he knows that they don't believe him, because another whine comes back almost immediately in response. It is not a convinced whine. Will smile-grimaces at them and fumbles in the dawning darkness and turns on one of the table lamps.

"Here, guys; light. Light is good for the soul. Light is good for you. Drink it all up." He knows he is talking rubbish, taking crazy. This is the Will Graham version of drunkenness. Odd, strange, almost Biblical comments. Drink up the light, my sheep.

He shuffle-walks to his bathroom, peels his clothes off. The dogs follow him as he becomes naked, eyes shining. They always follow him.

He ignores them, leaves the light off and steps into the shower. Turns the water on.

He needs to be wet, he needs to do something. He doesn't know what to do, and the shower is usually his default for when his soul no longer knows what to do, but is still burning. What can be done for a burning soul, if one can't become unconscious, and can't afford to indulge in increasingly self-destructive drug abuse? What does a person do when even his dreams are plagued with inexorable visions of despair and destruction? When he is suffocating on a level much more profound than the physical, suffocating slowly; drowning in a cold, dark spiritual lake?

Will has always gotten in the shower at such times.

It is movement, it is noise, it feels half-good against his skin and he tells himself he is (at least) getting clean.

Wounded animals generally navigate towards running water. They always have. A wounded deer will go towards the lake to die, or to heal. Whichever comes first.

Will is wounded very, very deeply, indeed. He drunkenly adjusts the water. He doesn't want it too hot, or he will get dizzy and maybe faint. And he doesn't want to faint and crack his head on the side of the tub (or does he? Does part of him want to do that? No...) and... he wants to stay in the water a long time, because it is movement, distracting movement, wet against his skin, and he is less present in the wet blurred rush of the water, he is less him and more part of the water, and he really, really desperately does not want to be too much of himself right now.

He wants to stay in the water forever, stay in it as a moving stream, a water spirit. He shuts his eyes and tilts his face up under the tepid spray and prays in his mind to the God he has always known in his cells is real.

It's not the God of churches; some childish entity demanding gold and slaughtered animals and children to walk around with candlesticks or go to confession. It is an ancient God, beyond human comprehension, but Will comprehends bits and pieces. Or he thinks he does. He senses God, always has, and prays alone, in the night. In the shower or in the woods, he prays.

_Please help me. I feel like I am dissolving. I feel like I might not be me for much longer, if you don't help me... and I still am enough of myself to not want to become something else. I'd rather die. But I don't want to die. Help me. _

* * *

Nothing comes back to him, no inner voice, no peace, and yet he knows, also, that God is with him. God doesn't have to speak back to be with him. That is where the faith part comes in. Accept the pain, commune, do your part. Hold on. Hold on and ride out the pain.

* * *

Suddenly he is gasping, and realizes in his fuzzy, drunken way that he has been holding his breath, waiting for some epiphany.

Nothing.

The water sprays over him some more.

He feels so exhausted, suddenly, legs weak and wobbling like rubber, but he can't get out of the shower. He can't go back to his old life.

He is on the verge of crisis.

He sits on the bottom of the shower in a ball, and the water pelts at his back and his sopping hair and his closed, long-lashed eyes. He hasn't been sleeping well and the shadows around his eyes are profound as bruises.

He sits and lets the shower water pelt him and it has never before felt like such a cold, dark rain.

* * *

He is in the shower a long, long time.

Finally, hours later, he gets out.

His mind is numb.

He is still drunk, but not quite so drunk as he once was.

He dries off fast, puts back on the clothes he stripped out of hours earlier and goes back into the living room.

Maybe he should eat something? He tries to remember when he last ate, and can't remember. He shuffles into the kitchen, looks in the fridge. Not much in there. He's been in the looney bin a long time, and now he is back, and his fridge is mostly empty.

Alanna must have gotten rid of the food as it decayed, thrown it away. But there isn't much food in the fridge, it hasn't been replaced, just condiments and salad dressings, an old jar of mayo. There are non-perishables in the pantry. Beans, pasta, oatmeal. It all seems like so much incredible work, the idea of actually cooking something.

Will finds a tub of peanut butter and pulls it off its shelf. He gets a spoon and eats some of it, decides it is okay. Pours dogs food sloppily into the bowls and makes sure everybody has water. Takes his peanut butter back into the living room and presses the play button on his answering machine.

Alanna tells him they are worried about him. Why won't he answer his cell phone? She understands why he is upset with them, but please, Will, please don't isolate yourself. Will grimaces at this, annoyed. Bitter beyond words. Presses the delete button.

The next message is from Jack. Jack is sending out his feelers. He is worried about Will, he feels guilty, and he probably wants to suggest therapy or something equally harebrained. Will has just spent months locked up in a mental hospital-cum-middle age dungeon, and anything associated with the mental health profession right now is taboo, almost abusive. So Jack won't say it, but Will knows he wants to, and that bugs the living shit out of him, too.

"Fuck you, Jack. You no longer have any right to worry about my mental health, or about what happens to me," Will tells the machine sullenly. Presses delete. It feels so good to erase their voices.

The next message is from Alanna. Please, will he talk to her? Just turn on his cell phone? Or send her an email, at least? She needs to know he is okay. Will thinks about the tone of her voice, the increasing worry. She is worried he might... what? Kill himself?

If that were the case, he would have done the deed in the looney bin, back when he thought he might be a cannibal killer and everything was a nightmare and no longer made any sense. He wants to feel some pleasure at Alanna's scared and guilty tone of voice, but he doesn't feel any pleasure at all, just a dull sadness for her.

He presses delete.

There is some call, then, about his phone plan. Would he like to pay 9.99 more a month and... Will hits delete immediately. Then, the last message.

It's from Hannibal.

Will straightens up immediately, without thinking about it, his posture nearly perfect, peanut butter forgotten.

"Will... your friends are worried about you. They see, in your continued silence, the potential for terminal self-destructiveness. I have told them that such an action on your part is highly unlikely. That your desire to persist with this life, despite all of your troubles, is profound." Hannibal is being cute, here. Cute and arrogant, and Will can't stop listening to the gentle cadence of his voice. He thinks if reincarnation is real that 100 lives from now he will still have dreams in the night and they might very well be narrated by Hannibal fucking Lecter.

"If you do not wish to speak to them, then speak with me, Will. I will relay the information to them. Please do not isolate yourself at this time. I know how dark it can get inside one's own mind. What's more, I believe you know that I know these things. That darkness can tear you apart, like a small animal in a storm torn limb from limb by the violence of nature, but if you develop the right skills, you can learn to control that storm."

"I trust you, Will. I trust in your desire to persist," Hannibal says smoothly, and the calls ends.

Will wants to yank the machine out of the wall to show the room he is upset, but that will accomplish nothing and will only upset his dogs. Hannibal knows exactly what is going on with him, because Hannibal put him in this situation.

But also...

Will has thought about this numerous times in the night. Hannibal's human-ness, in his eyes. That was once a real thing, Will is certain of it.

Something happened to Hannibal Lecter, something so profound and nauseatingly horrifying that the man, or the adolescent or the small, piss-stained boy... was forever changed. What happened to him?

Will has to know.

Something that made him into something else. The alternative, probably, was suicide. Hannibal's words are tempered with experience. From the beginning, Hannibal has been emotionally flirting with him, showing him little bits of the person he one no doubt was, long ago.

He wants to be seen.

He wants to share this darkness with someone else. If he was merely a monster- beyond redemption- he wouldn't have the desire to share that darkness. Some part of him wants to be validated, wants to be exonerated. Hannibal wants relief from his own demons. Doesn't he? Or is that Will's spin, Will's undue projection?

Will goes back into the kitchen, into the pantry. He gets out another bottle of wine. He knows it is stupid, to drink and face down the beast, but he is so tired, and so lost and he just doesn't want to be sober anymore.

He wants to ask Hannibal questions, but he knows he will chicken out or out-think himself if he is sober, and he is still drunk enough to act impulsively, here. He gets the wine and comes back.

Wine and peanut butter.

Hannibal would not be pleased.

He pours himself another glass, and drinks quickly. He is not savoring it here, it's not even good wine. This wine is a means to an end. Maybe a stupid end, but it's a risk he has to take.

Besides, he doesn't think Hannibal will see this coming, and that might be for the good.

Will drinks his wine. He drinks fast. He sees, in his mind's eye, the alcohol merging with his red blood cells, creating a mild toxic effect that his liver can't process. The warm fuzz returns.

The room tilts.

His tongue becomes loose in its home behind his teeth.

He runs his tongue over his back molars, over the smooth metallic tang of his fillings. He never brushed properly as a child, and as a result his back molars are pretty much all amalgam fillings. He keeps telling himself he'll get the damn things removed and replaced with porcelain, because mercury amalgam fillings are toxic and cause memory loss and neurotoxic effects and he wants his brain to work properly... doesn't he? Right now, it doesn't really seem to matter much.

His dogs are sitting around him, like the disciples of Jesus. He is sock-less and one of them- he isn't sure who- licks his sweaty foot. Will smiles at the gentle kindness of his animals, and picks up the phone.

He clumsily dials Hannibal's number. The man named Hannibal picks up on the very last moment of the second ring.

"Hello?" His voice is smooth cognac.

"Good evening, Doctor Lecter," Will says this a bit too loud. Drunk-loud. Hannibal is silent, processing. Planning his next words with great precision.

"Good evening, Will. I am glad you phoned."

"Are you?" Will asks back. He has a mental image of a ping pong ball shooting back and forth between two players, or of chess pieces being moved in quick succession as the chess clocks are started and stopped. Your move, my move, your move, my move...

"Your friends are concerned about you." Hannibal's move, appealing to Will's famous empathy.

"I do not wish to speak to them at this time. This talk between us will have to suffice, for them. You'll relay the fact of my continued... physical existence?" Will lets out a nearly suppressed bark of laughter, then, right at the end.

Hannibal is silent a moment longer than Will expects, processing.

"Have you been drinking tonight, Will?" Calm, controlled, not-angry. Faux concerned. A good therapist's voice.

"There is no point in lying to you, Dr. Lecter. Yes. I've been... testing my wine." He grimaces in the night. His dogs are watching him, offering their undying emotional support, and their wet, sloppy love. But right now all he can think about is Hannibal, and Hannibal's next move.

"Did you drink because you needed to escape yourself, or because you could not bear to speak to me sober? Or, maybe a combination of the two?" Hannibal finally says. Will processes this.

"You do not care for liars, do you, Dr. Lecter?" The understatement of the year. Will knows the answer.

"I find lying inherently self-destructive. It negates the purpose of therapy. It is a waste of my time, and of the liar's time."

"So the answer is no. Lying is no good. You'd prefer no answer over a lie?"

There is silence, but Will can almost see Hannibal's little smile.

"I'd prefer a patient answer, and if they can not, I'd prefer they honestly admit their inability to answer. Admitting a weakness is the first step towards overcoming one's own limitations."

"Then I won't lie to you. I will tell you this right now. If I don't think I can answer one of your questions tonight, then I simply will not answer. You can make whatever you want out of my failure to answer, but at least I will not have lied. Okay? That works, doesn't it? It's not... rude, is it?"

"That is acceptable to me, yes. Thank you," Hannibal says, ignoring the sarcasm in Will's voice, and Will feels a strange, sudden blossom of eager happiness.

He has felt it in himself before.

When Hannibal praises him, he feels happy, much the way he imagines his dogs feel when he pays them individual attention, when he pets their bowed heads. It is sick, that reaction, and yet... he still has it. To deny the truth would be even worse.

"I've spent a lot of time thinking about you, Dr. Lecter, over the last few months. Thinking about you, me, Jack... everyone, really. Jack and Alanna... they make sense to me. I'm disappointed in their lack of faith in me, but at the same time, I can piece them together. The puzzle pieces fit. You... you didn't make sense to me, and then I found a way that you made sense. And now I can't stop thinking about it."

There is a beat of silence. Hannibal's gears are spinning. "What did you decide about me?"

"You have a definite humanness, to you. You're not just a sociopath, or a monster, or anything so binary. You have vestigial compassion in your eyes, even if... even if it is only a remnant at this point. That's why it took me so long to figure out your nature, because that humanity can not be faked, that look... it has to come, or have come, from a real place. That place was real for you, at one point in this life. You were whole at one point, whole, with a properly functioning conscience. Then something happened to you, changed you, something that was no doubt horrific in a way I probably am not emotionally equipped to even begin to comprehend. It altered you profoundly, the person you were meant to be, set your entire life on a different course, and I think, on some very profound level, you have spent your entire life since that time looking for someone worthy of sharing that darkness with. So you're not alone with it."

"And you think I have found that confidant in you, Will?" Hannibal's words, his tone, are inscrutable. Is he amused? Alarmed? Excited? Will has no idea. He sounds mildly interested. Will has the mental impression of a cat awakened from a slumber by the fluttering shadow of a moth on the wall. Alert. Waiting for more.

"I think you have found, in me, someone who you believe might be worthy of your confidence, if I can be... made to understand the darkness, the profundity of it, that you have experienced. No... not experienced, that's a bit disingenuous, isn't it? That you were _tortured_ with? That seems more honest to me. You put me through Hell, Dr. Lecter, so I'd have a chance of understanding _your_ Hell. Because you're still redeemable. Aren't you? You don't want to be alone in the pit anymore. And for whatever you experienced, whatever Hell those monsters with human faces plunged you into... _my heart bleeds for you_."

Will feels a burning behind his eyes. The need to cry is back, but he is not certain if it is empathy for Hannibal or grief for himself. Hannibal seems to hear the tone change.

"You are trying to keep yourself from crying," Hannibal says, testing the waters. Will doesn't say anything.

"You want to believe that I am redeemable. You still view me as the monster of your fantasies. It is easier to see me as a killer than to accept the fact that you were wrong in accusing me of those horrors."

"For fuck's sake," Will says, and he knows it is rude, and that it is guttural. But... he is so damned tired, deeper than his cells, deeper, even, then his soul- something beyond his soul is tired, like its been treading water in a black sea for a thousand years and has a thousand more years to go.

His voice is a worn-out rasp.

"Can we just... can you just hypothetically play the part my delusional mind... if you really want to continue to insist that's what I am, _delusional_... can you just _please_... play the part? If you won't admit it, what we both know you are, if you won't or can not bring yourself to admit it to me verbally, then just play the part. Pretend to play the part? For the sake of a cohesive discussion? _Please_."

Silence. "I can tell you what I would say if I was the monster you think I am."

"Good. Fine. That'll do."

"But I won't do it over the phone. I want to be able to see your eyes." It is an eerie thing to say.

"My eyes? Why?" Will knows the answer. What Hannibal will tell him are the very secrets of his mangled soul, and he wants to see how that affects Will, because some part of him is still looking to make sense of the madness of his own existence. Hannibal- or some tiny part of him- is reaching out of the darkness, hoping to come back to the light.

That is what Will tells himself. It is what he needs to believe about the psychiatrist.

"Ordinarily I'd ask you to come to my office, but considering your inebriated state, I would like to ask for your permission to come to your home."

Silence. What Hannibal might tell him, soon.. might be game-changing. But is it dangerous? Is Hannibal a threat right now? This whole drunken confession thing maybe wasn't such a good idea...

"Will?" Hannibal asks. Will can almost see his eyebrows furrowing in concern- but concern for him, or concern because of something else? Who knows.

"I am thinking... weighing the risks, here, Dr. Lecter. Have I said too much? If you come over am... am I in danger, physically, right now? If you come over? You're not going to end me..." He is still drunk, he knows it.

If he was sober he would not be risking this, would not be saying these words in such a cavalier fashion. He is playing with a venomous animal. It's stupid as Hell. He knows that, but months of questions and grief and fascination and obsessions are bubbling out now in drunken slightly-manic implorations and he can't stop himself any more than a suffocating man can willingly stop his struggle for air.

"You're in no danger from me, physically, Will."

"You won't try to... harm me? _You promise?_ Because, you know, Dr. Lecter, if you did... harm me, tonight... at this point, and given my belly-showing behaviour right now... that could be considered rude." A small laugh.

Like that would deter Hannibal if he had his mind made up. Yeah, right, Willy. Dream on.

"I agree. It would be very rude," Hannibal says smoothly. "I have no intention of physically harming you, Will."

"What about harming my mind? Is that on the table for tonight's festivities?"

"I wish, for the sake of understanding you better, to play the part of the monster you seem to have convinced yourself is the true me. Call it a professional curiosity. You're a psychological outlier; none of my other patients have ever been in in such a convoluted psychiatric state. And I still consider you to be my friend, regardless of your feelings toward me."

Will thinks about this.

"If I were to harm you tonight, or if you were to disappear, there would be a record of this phone call. Not the words as far as I know, but the length of the call, from you to me. I believe they have ways of tracking vehicles, now, also. The newer models?"

Will is silent a beat longer. "My dogs... 7 dogs, also. I have 7 dogs. They're not aggressive, ordinarily, but..." He trails, but his meaning is clear. If you harm me, my dogs will attack.

"I would expect nothing less from your loyal dogs. They love you, I think, the same way Christ's disciples loved him. No doubt they would kill for you, and die for you."

Will thinks of his response, and then he has it. "Just so we're both clear, then."

"I believe we're both quite clear tonight, Will."

"_In vino veritas_," Will says clumsily. And he laughs, Will does, and can almost see Hannibal smiling his pleased, amused little smile over the phone.

* * *

He waits for Hannibal on his porch, in his T-shirt and his sweatpants- his "sick day" clothing- no jacket, no socks, no shoes, even though there is snow on the ground and the earth is set to kill by freezing. He doesn't feel the cold.

His head is swimming and he aims to keep it swimming, because the drunk-Will knows that only the drunk-Will is reckless enough to do this.

He doesn't want to metabolize the ethanol and clear it out of his system and sober up.

But he doesn't want to be too sloshed, either, or he will be in physical danger. He needs to drink at a consistent rate, like IV fluids titrated to enter the bloodstream at a set number of drops per minute. Hannibal's car headlights are suddenly in his face, bright, the sound of the car tires in his drive way, grinding down quartz gravel to dust.

"Will?" Hannibal says (calls?) loudly as he gets out of the car. Will raises the bottle and takes a gulp from it in response. He has dispensed with the showy-show of using a glass. Straight from the bottle like a baby with its wine. That will work. Drunk thoughts swirl.

"I'm waiting for you, waiting for you outside..." Will says. He comes down off the porch, bare-feet in the snow. "I am not too drunk to be useless, and not too sober to be guarded and self-conscious. It's a bit of a tight-rope walk... act."

Hannibal appraises him, looks down at the man's bare feet in the snow and the lost, haunted, drunken gleam in his eyes and smiles at him.

"Why don't we get you out of this cold?"

"This cold," Will says, and he suddenly sounds almost sober as he gazes down at his own purple-red feet and the snow that is barely illuminated by the lights from his own house. "This cold is all I have left to me anymore."

"I don't believe that is true, Will," Hannibal corrects him, and puts a gentle, murderous hand on his shivering shoulder. "You have me."

Will squints at the psychiatrist. "Is there a difference?" He says this brokenly, and Hannibal's smile flickers like a candle flame in a strong wind and goes out. "Let's get you inside," Hannibal says, and Will allows himself to be guided back into his own house.

* * *

His feet are burning and throbbing and numb and dark red, the toes looking almost blue where the capillaries have constricted and in some places frozen shut, where the tissues are deoxygented and cold. He has only been outside 20 minutes. 30 minutes?

Who knows.

Even the pain is pleasure right now, the pain speaks to some horrible screaming deeper banshee pain in his soul. It is polite of his body to waltz with his soul's pain like this. His thoughts are drunkenly profound.

Hannibal walks him to his couch, sits him down, gets him an afghan throw and puts it around the younger man's shoulders. He looks at Will, Hannibal does, at his half-closed eyes, haunted and limned with darkness that looks almost like bruises. Will's skin is pale; now it is also frost-bitten.

He has the sick look of the mentally ill, the spiritually tortured. A man who hasn't slept well in months, who can no longer relax, even when unconscious. His feet will hurt when they warm up, but nothing more than sharp, electric pains. Little jolts as the blood and the nerves come back to full awareness, but not much tissue damage, and what there will be will pass.

"I was waiting for you outside," Will repeats again, like a small boy. Hannibal sees him right now as a small, eager, lost boy. Wanting to please. He smiles at Will, pleased.

"Yes, I know." Hannibal says.

"My mind is no longer my own," Will says drunkenly. He takes another drink from his bottle. "Oh? I am sorry, Hannibal. Where are my manners? Would you like some wine?"

"I am okay without, tonight. Thank you," Hannibal says. Will nods, like he has been expecting this.

"Okay. You don't mind if I drink, then? No need for a glass... I found the glass was slowing things down."

"However you wish to drink your wine is acceptable to me," Hannibal says. Will smiles at the psychiatrist in a lop-sided, mad way. Cheshire cat with a concussion.

Hannibal smiles back.

"You phoned me for a reason tonight," Hannibal prompts. Will is not with-it enough to guide his own therapy right now, his own disclosures.

"I have spent so many long hours thinking about you, Hannibal," Will says, and takes a greedy gulp of wine, wipes his lips. He is shivering harder now. He blinks, disoriented.

Hannibal waits, hungrily, for more.

"We are our childhoods magnified, wouldn't you say? Me? You? The pizza delivery boy? Our childhoods, our genetics, our genetic memories, our epigenetic memories... something as subtle as a dark look at a certain, landmark moment in time can change a malleable, young mind. What was your dark look, Hannibal?" Will stops speaking and looks at Hannibal for confirmation that his words are valued. They are valued.

"Our childhoods have profound effects on the men and women we become in this life. I agree with you on that," Hannibal pontificates.

"Our childhoods can haunt us, like ghosts. We can be alive, and still be haunted by our younger selves. Memories can be ghosts, can't they?" Will urges. Drinks. Hannibal nods.

"Yes. That is a rather poetic way of phrasing it. But I agree with you." Hannibal's words are clear and confident with analysis, with past experience.

"Are you haunted by your younger self, Hannibal? Are you haunted by memories?"

"Are you?" Hannibal shoots back and Will smiles widely. So that is what this weird night will be like. A ping pong, back and forth match. Quid pro quo. Tit for tat.

_This... for that._

"I will tell you about me, and you can- hypothetically of course- tell me about yourself," Will's eyes glance around the room, moth-eyes, landing on nothing. Hannibal is getting up.

"Are you leaving so soon?" Will says, not sure if he is relieved or disappointed, or both. His drunken mind is slow, emotional, tilting like a psychic carnival ride of days gone by, a sepia-and-pastel Tilt-a-whirl of the mind.

"I am putting on the kettle for tea. I need to get something from the car, also." Hannibal rises and leaves and comes back with his medical bag. Antiquated, profound, classy, and somehow sinister. Maroon leather, steel clasps, sterling silver handle. Ultimate Hannibal. Where did he get such a bag? Was it a gift from a relative, someone who doctored long ago? Or did Hannibal find it in antiques museum in Maine, sitting next to a jointed, mohair teddy bear (something German, no doubt)?

"You brought your doctoring bag?" Will says, words almost sarcastic.

"You sounded distressed on the phone. I didn't know what state I might find you in."

"Better safe than sorry," Will allows. Nods. Hannibal says nothing, just waits.

"Why am I here, Will?" Hannibal finally says.

He has come back some time later with tea in a little pot. It's on Will's humble, cedar coffee table.

The dogs are sniffing around. Hannibal has tried to prepare a food platter, but Will's home is hardly up to par for the gourmand. Still, he has tried.

He has alternated Oreo cookies and digestive crackers on a plate. In the middle is a small mound of dried figs. Will didn't know he had any dried figs, but he likes them. Figs are one of the most alkaline and healing fruits. They are a Biblical fruit. Where did Hannibal find them?

The dogs' sniffing becomes more urgent. One of them sniffs Hannibal, but the others stay far away from Hannibal.

Hannibal considers the dog. Will considers Hannibal.

"He wants you to give him people food," Will says, then, unnecessarily, and nods at the plate. "Anything but the Oreos are acceptable. The cocoa in the Oreos..."

"Of course," Hannibal says, and passes the eager dog a digestive cracker. The dog takes it with thankful wet eyes and moves away slowly. He is behaving politely, Will notices. Ordinarily that dog- who Will calls Harvey- would have eaten directly from the plate, without asking. Such is Hannibal's appeal, and his power.

The others stay on Will's side of the living room, watchful and- Will thinks- a bit uneasy. Harvey comes back to Hannibal when he is finished eating. Harvey is either stupid or reckless. Like Will, maybe.

"This dog? What breed is it?" Hannibal asks Harvey's master, and Will shrugs.

"I call him a Heinz 57," Will says and he sucks back another mouthful of warm, red wine.

"Heinz 57?" Hannibal repeats, not understanding.

"He's a mutt. He looks like he has some lab in him. Yellow lab. Maybe some pit bull, too."

Will found Harvey caught in barbed wire a few miles off, while out hiking. The dog was in terrible pain, dehydrated, infected, no longer strong enough to buck his wires, mewling and then screaming in his dog voice when he saw Will.

His eyes have always been traumatized, a bit insane, but Will took him home, anyway. Gave him antibiotics, cleaned the wounds, got Harvey a dog collar, and a little identifying tag with his name (Harvey) and Will's own name and phone number. No vet for Harvey, because Will knew the vet would want the dog euthanized. Not because of the physical state of the animal, but because of the look of latent psychosis in his eyes.

So Will bypassed the entire conversation, and kept the animal at home, resting and recovering and eating and sleeping and cellular-ly repairing, but Harvey has always been a bit different, a bit on the edge. Luckily, Will Graham has no children, and doesn't live within walking distance of any children, any families. Harvey has never so much as snarled at him. But he is still a liability.

"He has deep scarring around his face," Hannibal says, watching the dog. Harvey obviously wants another cracker. Finally, he inclines his head and makes a begging noise. Hannibal smiles, takes a digestive cracker, breaks it into quarters and gives the dog one of the pieces. Harvey eats the biscuit straight from Hannibal's hand this time, eyes watching the man's face.

"Harvey, stop mooching," Will says blandly, and waves his hand at the dog.

"You don't strike me as a dog person," Will tells Hannibal then. Hannibal says nothing for a long while.

"They were never suited to my temperament. I prefer cats."

"And yet you don't own... care for, rather... a cat," Will says after a long moment.

"Maybe I should get one?" Hannibal asks playfully. "It could be an office mascot, perhaps?"

Will Graham grins drunkenly at this. This is how they will start this long night. With social chit chat that isn't quite chit chat.

"I can see, very clearly and very well, a cat stalking around your office and intimidating the patients," Will says sloppily.

Harvey is still by Hannibal, not put off but the fact that Hannibal has turned his attention back to Will. Harvey knows that, if he is patient enough, the man will reward him with another bit of cracker. Harvey also knows this blond, patrician "man" is not really a man, and that the real man-man with the kind eyes that saved him from the painful wires needs protection. He knows all of these things on a level deeper than thought, but not as deep as instinct. He will stay near Hannibal, and if Hannibal begins to smell like a threat, Harvey will jump at the not-a-man's throat and open it up.

"Do cats intimidate or do people merely feel intimidated by them? The difference is important," Hannibal says in response. Will nods.

"Depends on the cat, I guess." This is Will's non-committal answer. It's a stand-in answer, essentially a cop-out, but Hannibal accepts it. All of tonight, on Will's part, is a gift. It is rude to look a gift horse in the mouth, is it not?

"What type should I get?" Hannibal asks, and helps himself to one of the dried figs. To Will, they suddenly look like dehydrated testicles. He doesn't know why.

Hannibal eats the fig and looks at Will and waits.

"Breed of cat, you mean? Temperament? Which?"

Hannibal says nothing. Both. Neither. Whichever.

"The shelters are full. I can't see you with a particularly... needy cat, though. One that basically doesn't need you."

"Needy?" Hannibal says hungrily.

"Some cats need more human interaction and affection than others. I think you'd do well with a little hunter, someone very independent. He or she'll keep the rats out of your office."

"My office doesn't have rats," Hannibal says, and smiles at the insanity of that notion.

"And a little hunter or huntress can make sure your office stays sans rats," Will says. Another gulp of wine, then. He puts the bottle down. He has topped off his blood alcohol levels, and it will take the better part of an hour for his liver to even start to cope with the additional onslaught of ethanol.

Tomorrow he will drink coffee and get gatorade from the gas station up the road, pop magnesium tablets and B vitamin complexes and take advil and order in pizza or eat bananas for the potassium. He'll watch TV and worry about tonight. He will worry about tonight, tomorrow...

"I can see you with a black cat, even if that sounds melodramatic. Or a cliche. A specific type of black cat. Something like a little panther. It won't come when called but will skulk around in the background while your patients plumb the depths of their emotional person-hoods, and every so often its eyes will light up like flashbulbs when the light from your desk hits them. A Russian blue, though, has a certain sophistication and is a little less obvious than black. Black has been overdone to death," Will prattles. Hannibal lets him.

"Russian blue is the sepia of black."

"I might just have to consider a feline addition to the office, after tonight," Hannibal says calmly. His lips are upturned, the very tips of his lips. Amused. Will is suddenly, strangely, glad Hannibal is amused.

"You're sort of a cat yourself, already, though. Aren't you Hannibal?"

"I don't really know what that means," Hannibal says and Will stares and when Hannibal says nothing further, Will lets it drop.

"What would you name your cat?" Will asks and Hannibal is silent, and Will can tell he is really thinking about it.

"Is there really a need to name it? If something doesn't care to come by name, or respond by name, does it make any sense to bestow a name upon such a being, whose very soul is- we might say- politely feral?"

Will thinks about this. He's known some cats that come by name. Not many, but some. He liked them, generally.

Hannibal would not burden himself with such a servile cat, though.

Hannibal's cat would stay out of sight most of the time, prowl around in the shadows and stare, obliquely, at obsequiously fawning humans. It would arrive silently and depart silently, and maybe bring Hannibal half-alive birds and mice as occasional gifts. Will can envision it all too clearly. It makes him shiver, a bit.

In Hannibal's medical bag is a chemical in an amber glass vial. Hannibal has put some of this chemical in one of Will's coffee mugs (Will doesn't own teacups) and it is such a small amount, that Will, drunk, will not even see it. When he pours himself some tea, it will mix with the tea, almost tasteless, and when Will wakes up tomorrow, he will remember little of tonight and will assume that his lack of memory is an alcoholic black-out.

But his soul will remember, his dreams and his subconscious. And in that way, Hannibal Lecter prepares to share himself with Will.

Will Graham will taste him tonight.

He will tell Will, this night, about Mischa, and Will will end up telling Hannibal about being 8 years of age and hunting for the first time with his father, Michael (a Vietnam war veteran who suffered from night terrors and was phobic of electrical storms).

He will tell Hannibal of the loathing he felt towards himself for stalking the hapless deer, of yelling at a stag moments before his father could take the kill shot.

Of that stag, therefore, getting away; a big black beast of an animal. Will saw the stag turn its head and saw himself (apparently) reflected; saw himself in those ancient, sylvan mirror-eyes and afterwards the young William Graham believed, magically, the soul of this specific stag was his guardian angel and was linked quantumly to his very being.

Hannibal will smile broadly when Will says this.

Hannibal will tell of Mischa's last moments on this Earth, and Will's eyes will produce tears of grave compassion that Hannibal himself can no longer make.

Will will drunkenly demand they have a "funeral" for Hannibal's innocence and childhood out in the midnight snow, and Hannibal will humor Will.

Will Graham will go back outside in his bare feet (despite Hannibal's gentle suggestion of shoes, no, Will will say he wants to be "like" the boy Hannibal once was, the barefoot, frozen, dejected and defeated boy) and they will stand and look down into the snow and Will will weep in earnest then.

He will weep for Hannibal, and for the pain Hannibal once experienced, the pain that drove his soul from his body and detached his very sense of goodness and Hannibal will stare, and try to feel, but be unable to feel anything beyond mild curiosity and excitement for Will's emotional nakedness.

Hannibal will stare. But that staring will be his own midnight weeping. On some deep, cellular level, hidden even from his subconscious, he will say hello to little Mischa.

She will not say hello back. For she is dead. The dead never, ever talk back, no matter how much we want them to...

_(Hannibal?! The voice is gone like the scream of wind, Mischa is a curled whistle in the night)_

The Dead do not speak. The dead are gone.

But Hannibal appreciates Will's empathy. Even if it is self-destructive, psychotic. It is clinically significant and intellectually thrilling.

* * *

And in the morning Will will get up, head throbbing like evil demons are pounding away inside his skull with ballpeen hammers, and the 37-year-old will drink water left in a large tumbler on his coffee table, take the advil around positioned next to the tumbler, and he will read Hannibal's fine, cultured cursive letters penned in blood red ink on a scrap piece of paper.

"Thank you, Will, for sharing yourself with me. -H"


End file.
